The Programme of the Early Comintern, and the Transitional Programme (13/18)
The principle of the United Front could also be expressed as unity from below, or “unity with the workers always, with the workers leaders sometimes.” The whole point, here, is that the United Front is intended to unite the working class in action, and is, thereby, differentiated from purely parliamentary alliances. It was necessary, for the reason that Trotsky elaborates above, which is that, in countries where the Communists represent only a quarter, third or half of the working-class, that leaves the majority still affiliated to the reformists and centrists. Unity of the working-class in action requires, in practice, a unity of these different organisations, and thereby, with their leaders. But, such unity in action does not mean unity with the leaders of those other parties on the basis of their politics. On the contrary, it means that, whilst undertaking joint activity, the Communists dissociate themselves from the reformist and centrist politics of the leaders of those other parties. If fascists are attacking a neighbourhood, communists do not have to agree with the politics of the leaders of a reformist party in order to fight alongside the workers who still have illusions in those leaders, so as to defeat the immediate enemy. On the contrary, such joint activity is the best way of winning those workers away from those leaders, and their reformist politics, but it requires that the communists use the opportunity to expose those politics and explain the necessity of their own, for that to happen.
In the US, currently, communists working inside the Democrat party, at local level, would organise workers defence squads to offer support to black communities under attack from racist cops, and fascists, they would encourage the reformist workers who still have faith in the Democrat Party to join them in such action, and use that action to expose the bourgeois politics of Biden et al.
Trotsky, in later years, contrasts this revolutionary tactic with the approach of the Stalinists, for example, in relation to the alliance with the TUC leaders in the Anglo-Russian Committee. (See: The Anglo-Russian Committee) In place of unity from below, which would have led communists to have warned the British workers about the bourgeois nature of the politics of the TUC leaders, who would sell them out in the General Strike, the Stalinists instead led the workers to place faith in those very leaders in order to retain a purely diplomatic alliance with those reformist leaders. Trotsky and the Left Opposition repeatedly called for the communists to break with the TUC leaders, but Stalin refused. This experience was totemic, because it symbolised the method that Stalin would use also in China in 1927, in its revolution, and his instruction to the Chinese Communists to form an alliance with Chiang Kai Shek, and the Kuomintang. (See: Problems of the Chinese Revolution) In essence, Stalin had now reverted to the stages theory that he, Zinoviev and Kamenev had applied in February 1917, in relation to the provisional government, whereby, they saw the need for society to pass through a long period of bourgeois democracy before socialism became possible. Such alliances are not a manifestation of the United Front of workers parties, but of a Popular Front, a cross class alliance in which the interests of the workers are always subordinated, and which invariably lead to the bourgeois forces within them turning on the working-class.
Part of the reason for Stalin's attempt to continue the diplomatic alliance with the TUC leaders was, indeed, the hope that it might facilitate the Chinese revolution, as a bourgeois-democratic revolution. In fact, the trajectory was predictable. The social-imperialists who had been opposed to the Bolsheviks in 1917, and some of whom organised Labour Battalions to fight alongside the Whites against the Bolsheviks, were hardly going to be reliable allies for the Chinese revolution. At a time of its choosing, the TUC leaders themselves broke with the Anglo-Russian Committee, and, at a time of his choosing, Chiang Kai Shek broke with the Chinese Communists.
At the time, in 1927, Trotsky and the Left Opposition were allied with Zinoviev and Kamenev in the United Opposition against Stalin, following his rightward turn in alliance with Bukharin. Trotsky points out later that, as a result, the criticism of Comintern policy, in relation to China, was muted in order to obtain the agreement of Zinoviev and Kamenev, who themselves still held to their 1917 positions in relation to the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry.
Trotsky points out that Lenin, in The Theses on the National and Colonial Questions had said that it was necessary not to allow the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie to cloak the anti-colonial struggles under the banner of communism. It was necessary for communists to retain political and organisational separation from such forces, But, Stalin and Bukharin, in the same way they had formed a disastrous diplomatic alliance with the leaders of the TUC, not only formed such an alliance with Chiang Kai Shek, but also, on his insistence, allowed the Kuomintang into the Communist International. They did this at the very moment when the Left Opposition, and Trotsky were being expelled from it! At the time of his choosing, however, Chiang Kai Shek repaid Stalin by organising a coup and turning his forces on the Chinese Communists who were murdered in their thousands. Unable, to admit their mistakes, Stalin then repeated it, forcing the Chinese communists into an alliance with the “Left Kuomintang”.
Having expelled the Left Opposition, Stalin changed the direction of his fire, now aiming at Bukharin and the Right Opposition. Having attacked the Left for proposing a more rapid pace of industrialisation, Stalin now embarked on the programme of break-neck industrialisation, and forced collectivisation. The former required that a larger social surplus was extracted from the agricultural sector, whilst that, plus the forced collectivisation, provoked a response from the peasants, a collapse in agricultural production, and famine that killed millions. Similarly, having opposed the Left's criticism of the Popular Front strategy, Stalin now swung to the opposite extreme rejecting any kind of alliance, including the United Front of workers' parties, to confront the rising menace of fascism that had been established already in Italy, and was on the rise in Germany, and other parts of Europe. This was the start of the so called Third Period. Any organisation other than the Communist Party was described as some kind of fascism. The social-democrats were social-fascists, Trotskyists were Trotsky-fascists, and so on.
Part of the reason and justification for the United Front tactic was that, in 1914, the socialist movement had split, the split being formalised by the creation of the Communist International. Many workers remained confused about the need for such a split which divided their forces. With hindsight, Lenin and the other revolutionaries who pushed through that split – though again in some countries, the reformists themselves forced it by expelling groups of organised revolutionaries – was a mistake. They overestimated the likelihood of global revolution, and could have better concentrated larger groups of workers around them had they been operating as a disciplined revolutionary wing of the existing reformist parties, a fact that the Trotskyists were forced to accept, in practice, in the 1930's, with “The French Turn”. Indeed, Lenin advised the British Communist Party to apply for affiliation to the LP, which it could easily have done, by simply informing the LP that it had changed its name. The British Socialist Party, which became the Communist Party, was already affiliated to the LP, in the same way as was the ILP etc. But, it was an indication of the sectarianism of the British CP that it refused to do that, and phrased its application for affiliation in terms that would inevitably be rejected. In other instances, virtually the whole of the existing socialist party became affiliated to the Comintern without, in fact, changing its reformist politics. Had the split not occurred, its unlikely that Stalinism would have arisen as such a powerful force, or that the Left Oppositionists could have been isolated in the way they were.
In the big confrontations that emerged, those workers inevitably asked why their could not be some form of joint action. The tactic was devised by the Communists to address that by the Communists themselves proposing such joint action, whilst explaining their differences with the leaders of reformism that led them to create separate organisations. To be fair, it was not just the Stalinists that were responsible for the resultant sectarianism. The united front presented a problem for the reformist leaders, precisely because their sphere of operation was in parliaments and corridors of power, not on the streets, or in the workplaces. The united front dragged them out of their places of comfort to take part in direct action in struggles of the workers themselves. That meant that their actions could be compared to their words, and their ideas could be tested and challenged in practice in front of the gaze of the workers. When the Stalinists refused to engage in any such united front, it gave the reformist leaders the perfect opportunity to follow suit.
The consequence was inevitable, the fascists took control of the streets, and then of the Reichstag. For a time, the Stalinists tried to brazen out the extent of the catastrophe they had wrought, claiming that after Hitler it would be their turn. Instead, they found themselves sent to the concentration camps, followed soon after by the socialists, then the trades unionists, and then by the Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. Inevitably, Stalin changed course again, reverting to the earlier position of opportunism and the Popular Front. But, as with the experience of the Anglo-Russian Committee, and with the Chinese Revolution, it led once more to disaster, this time in Spain.
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